Introduction to the Problem of Free Will and Divine Causality Aquinas Philosophy Workshop, Mt. St. Mary’s College, 2013 Alfred J. Freddoso (Last edited - 6/19/2013) I. The Context: Divine Providence (Plan) A. God, the divine artisan, freely and knowingly plans, orders and provides for all the effects that constitute His artifact, the created universe with its entire history, and executes His chosen plan by playing an active causal role sufficient to ensure its exact realization. Thus, whatever occurs is properly said to be specifically decreed by God. More exactly, each effect produced in the created universe is either specifically and knowingly intended by Him (providentia approbationis) or, in concession to creaturely defectiveness, specifically and knowingly permitted by Him (providentia concessionis). 1. This is an important one of the elements shared in common by both Dominicans and Jesuits in the 16th century De Auxiliis controversy. There are many other such elements, which I will enumerate below. 2. Despite the fact that this conception of divine providence is clearly found in St. Thomas, is well established in Catholic doctrine (close to de fide, I would say), and does not seem to have been disputed by either Lutherans or Calvinists in the 16th century, it is rejected by many contemporary Evangelical philosophers of religion and even by some prominent Catholics, including Peter Geach and (as I read him) Jacques Maritain. (In the early 1990's I was scolded in a book review by a Jesuit (!) for invoking this account of providence; he called it a Stoic, rather than Christian, conception of divine providence.) Without this strong conception of ‘meticulous providence’ (as it is derisively called by one analytic philosopher of religion), the De Auxiliis controversy disappears. Of course, the watered-down, anthropomorphic replacement accounts of divine providence are not exactly nothing to write Rome about. B. This conception of providence entails that God has comprehensive knowledge of creation in general and, more specifically, comprehensive knowledge of future contingents. For, as St. Thomas puts it, God’s knowledge is a cause of things, and not vice versa. That is to say, God has comprehensive foreknowledge because He antecedently knows what He Himself is going to do and He knows what will ensue, given what He is going to do—and His knowledge extends not only to necessary effects but also to contingent effects. Dominicans and Jesuits again agree on this much. Their dispute is over the details of exactly how all of this can be true. More below. C. One last point of agreement between the Dominicans and Jesuits, and Garrigou-Lagrange is very clear about this in The One God: The doctrine of divine providence entails that God has comprehensive foreknowledge not only of absolute future contingents, which will in fact be actualized, but also of conditional future contingents, which describe what would take place under any given circumstances, even those that will never be actualized. The Dominicans rely here on the very same Scriptural passages Molina cites 2 when he is trying to show that God’s comprehensive and infallible foreknowledge cannot be wholly accounted for by the presence of absolute future contingents outside their causes in eternity. God’s knowledge goes way beyond that. The difference between the two groups is over just how God knows conditional future contingents, and this is directly related to their differences over freedom and divine causality, to be discussed below. II. The Context: Divine Governance (Execution of the Plan) A. The Christian doctrine of divine governance includes God’s creating the world ex nihilo and, as an extension of the doctrine of creation, His directly conserving each thing from the top down, as it were, at every moment it exists. It also includes as a crucial element (and one that arguably follows from divine conservation) the claim that every effect brought about by a created agent is also brought about immediately by God as an efficient cause, so that the creatures of the world depend radically on God not only for their esse but also for their agere. This is the so-called doctrine of divine general concurrence with secondary causes, and it is a causal means by which God executes His providential plan—and, again, this is a point on which the 16th century Dominicans and Jesuits agree. B. Let me spell out this agreement on God’s general concurrence in more detail. (Remember that this applies to all agents, whether they are acting naturally or freely.) Here are five tenets which Dominicans and Jesuits hold in common; you might think of them as spelling out the metaphysical implications of St. Thomas’ arguments for the existence of a First Mover and of a First Efficient Cause: 1. God is a per se and immediate cause of any effect produced by a created agent. 2. In producing such an effect, God and the created agent act by the very same cooperative action. 3. Even though there is just a single action, God and the secondary agent act by different powers and within diverse orders of causality. More specifically, the secondary agent acts by its created or natural powers as a particular cause of the effect, whereas God, the First Agent, acts by His uncreated power as a general or universal cause of the effect. The point of calling God a general or universal cause of the effects of secondary agents is, in part, that any communication of esse by a secondary agent is a participation in God’s own communication of esse-as-such, and that God’s manner of allowing for this participation is to tailor His proper causal influence in each case to what is demanded by the natures of the relevant secondary agents. So certain features of the effect, e.g., its being something rather than nothing and its being something good, are traced primarily to God’s contribution, whereas the specific nature of the effect, along with any defects, are traced primarily to the secondary cause’s contribution. 4. The secondary cause’s contribution to the effect is causally subordinate to God’s contribution. 3 5. In any given case the cooperative action of God and the secondary cause with respect to a given effect is such that the influence actually exercised by the one would not have existed at all in the absence of the influence exercised by the other. This follows from the fact that a secondary cause is unable to effect anything without God’s concurrence, taken together with the fact that in any given concrete situation God’s general concurrence complements the particular concurrence of the secondary cause and hence does not overdetermine the effect. C. You will find each of these tenets, in more or less the same language, in the texts of St. Thomas. Indeed, they gave rise to a number of slogans commonly invoked by commentators on St. Thomas to describe the relation of the First Cause to created or secondary causes—slogans that are more or less based on the analogy between secondary causality and ordinary instrumental causality: (a) ‘A secondary cause does not act unless it is moved (or: pre-moved) by the First Cause’, (b) ‘A secondary cause is applied to its action by the First Cause’, (c) ‘A secondary cause is determined (or: predetermined) to its effect by the First Cause’, (d) ‘A secondary cause acts in the power of the First Cause’, and (e) ‘A secondary cause is subordinated in its acting to the First Cause’. As we will see below, the Jesuits reject this assimilation of secondary causality to instrumental causality, in large measure because they are convinced that it is destructive of human free choice, though they think that it destroys the rightful (limited) autonomy of non-rational natural causes as well. Still, out of respect for the tradition, they try to hang on to the slogans just listed. For instance, it’s sort of fun to watch Suarez strive mightily to preserve the truth of these slogans by, shall we say, creative reinterpretation in Metaphysical Disputations 22.2 §§46-60. D. One last preliminary note before we turn to free choice. The middle years of the 20th century witnessed no shortage of commentators (Bernard Lonergan the most preeminent among them) who claimed that St. Thomas had in the 13th century already solved all the problems that the 16th century Dominicans and Jesuits argued so passionately about. Given the brilliance of the 16th century thinkers, this claim sounds a tad suspicious on the surface; and, indeed, a close perusal of the relevant 20th century works shows (or so I say) that it is just plain false. The fact is that St. Thomas never explicitly addressed certain key claims that became the focus of the De Auxiliis dispute. And though I have little doubt that he would side with the man whom I think of as his most illuminating commentator, viz., Domingo Bañez, the fact is that Luther and Calvin had managed to sharpen the focus of Catholic theologians in new ways on the relation of free choice with grace, divine foreknowledge, providence, predestination, and reprobation. (Hence, the full title of Molina’s most famous work, Liberi Arbitrii cum Gratiae Donis, Divina Praescientia, Providentia, Praedestinatione et Reprobatione Concordia.) To my mind, the 16th century debate was a stunningly sophisticated—perhaps, in the eyes of some, too sophisticated—development on topics for which St. Thomas had established the general framework. III. The Heart of the Matter: Free Choice 4 A. Leave out of consideration for the moment God’s concurrence with acts of human free choice, and concentrate just on the order of created or secondary causes.